It has to be clearly stated that current operating speeds of nano-electromechanical single electron transistors (NEMSETs) are of the order of 1 GHz, which is not competitive with standard complimentary metal oxide semiconductors (CMOS_

As we have found in recent measurements self-excitation can be exploited to generate mechanical oscillations without any ac excitation. Hence, dc voltages are sufficient to operate the NMC. Basically, a dc voltage creates an electric field to support mechanical oscillations of the nanopillars. A classical example is straightforward to construct. It has to be noted that onset of the mechanical oscillations is induced by a thermal fluctuation, which is found to be enhanced, if the electrical field is inhomogeneous.

The current work that is described as nanomechanical, will still be using DC current. However, a mechanical piece the pillar controls the flow of current.

We propose a fully mechanical computer based on nanoelectromechanicalelements. Our aim is to combine this classical approach with modern nanotechnology to build a nanomechanical computer (NMC) based on nanomechanical transistors. The main motivation behind constructing such a computer is threefold: (i) mechanical elements are more robust to electromagneticshocks than current dynamic random access memory (DRAM) based purely oncomplimentary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology, (ii) the power dissipated can be orders of magnitude below CMOS and (iii) the operating temperature of such an NMC can be an order of magnitude above that of conventional CMOS.

They have designed all of the different types of circuits that are needed. Logic elements and memory

Mechanism for two nanocomputer gates, initial position. One control rod with two gate knobs is seen laterally; two more rods with knobs are seen end on. Each rod with associated knobs is a single molecule

Here is an array of rod logic

NOTE: Drexler chose to model this cruder system to show that even simple and easy to define mechanical processes could have interesting performance at the nanoscale